Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Serial

[July 22, 1966] Ridiculous! (August 1966 Amazing)

3 Comments


by John Boston

The Sublime Don’t Work Here No More

. . . Not that it showed up very often when it did.  But the previous issue, which at last attained the status of “not bad,” raised hopes, now dashed again.

The theme of this August 1966 Amazing is plainly announced on the cover, a crude and silly-looking image by James B. Settles, from the back cover of the July 1942 Amazing, titled Radium Airship of Saturn.  You might also think that it doesn’t make much sense, but you’d be wrong!  What you see is actually the top two-thirds of the 1942 version; what you’re missing is the surface of Saturn, and a caption: “The motor in this air-ship is a disintegrating rocket-blast caused by the breaking down of a copper core by a stream of powerful radium rays concentrated on it.  It acts like a giant fireworks rocket.” It’s science!


by James B. Settles

Inside, the theme is carried forward with the conclusion of the Murray Leinster serial begun in June, a new novelet by Philip K. Dick, and five reprinted stories, particulars below.  The brightest spot in the issue is the absence of an editorial, though the usual brief and praiseful letter column is present.

While the editor misses no chance to bad-mouth the magazine’s prior regime, directly and through his selection of letters to publish, one thing has remained constant, and has seemingly intensified: the abominable proofreading.  (“Strickly speaking,” indeed.)

There's also a different sort of difficulty facing Amazing and Fantastic now.  It's been rumored for a while that they are not paying the authors for the reprinted material, which is now confirmed for those not plugged into the more authoritative gossip channels.  Kris Vyas-Myall has helpfully flagged the new issue of the fanzine Riverside Quarterly, in which the editor mentions that he confirmed with Kris Neville that he did not get paid for his recently reprinted story, and confirmed with Damon Knight, president of the newly constituted Science Fiction Writers of America, that this is the general practice. 

I suppose this may reflect the publishing practice prevalent in earlier years of buying "all rights" (sometimes simply by so noting on the author's check, with no more formal contract than that).  So maybe it's legal, but it stinks.  Knight has called on the members of SFWA to boycott the publisher until it changes its ways, and editor Leland Sapiro suggests that readers do the same with the magazines.  I'd take that advice, but duty dictates otherwise.

Stopover in Space (Part 2 of 2), by Murray Leinster

Murray Leinster’s latest Western treads a familiar path.  There’s a new sheriff, but he’s not really quite in town yet, because somebody doesn’t want him there, and it probably has to do with the stagecoach full of gold that is expected to arrive any day now.  It seems like business as usual from the author of Kid Deputy, Outlaw Guns, and Son of the Flying ‘Y’.

Oh, wait.  Sorry.  Wrong rut.  Trying again:

In Murray Leinster’s latest space opera, Lieutenant Scott of the Space Patrol is on his way to take over his first command, Checkpoint Lambda, a station orbiting the star Canis Lambda, whose system is of no special interest except that no fewer than six space lanes cross there.  (Didn’t know space has lanes?  People established them, I suppose so no one will get lost.) En route, Scott learns that several passengers had been supposed to leave Lambda on a ship recently, but didn’t, under peculiar circumstances—and one of them was “a girl.” This bears repetition, to the author and to Scott; a few pages later, Scott is reviewing the available facts, and notes that “passengers—including a girl—hadn’t left the checkpoint when they should.”


by Gray Morrow

Now, what could be happening?  Scott doesn’t know, but he does know the Golconda Ship is expected to show up at Lambda in the near future.  That ship is owned by a bunch of guys who went somewhere nobody knows and came back with a load of “treasure” which made them rich, and they go back for more every four years or so.  What kind of treasure?  Gold, platinum, radioactives, miracle cures from an unknown planet, the secret wisdom of an ancient civilization?  Doesn’t say, now or at any other point until the end of the story.  For the author’s purposes, you don’t need to know.  It’s just a game piece.

So what seems to be going on here?  Owlhoots!  Er, sorry.  Gangsters!  Scott is strongly discouraged from debarking onto Checkpoint Lambda, but insists, and finds himself going through the motions of normality with some slovenly types pretending to be the station crew.  He meets their nominal mastermind, one Chenery, who pretends to know Scott—and, before too long, he encounters the real power, whom Chenery recruited, and who is known as—Bugsy!  He is there to provide and direct the muscle, er, blastermen.*

* No, Bugsy and the Blastermen did not play at last Saturday’s sock hop.  That was somebody else.

So, here are the pieces in play: a good guy, some bad guys, treasure to be fought over, “a girl” to be protected.  What else do we need?  Oh yes, an external menace.  How about the Five Comets?  The Canis Lambda system has no planets—they all blew up eons ago, and the Checkpoint is attached to one of the bigger pieces—but it has some really fine comets, and they are all going to arrive at about the same time, right athwart the Checkpoint’s orbit—and there’s no astrogator, except for Scott!  (One might ask why the powers that be wouldn’t put the Checkpoint in some other location than the entirely predictable convergence point of multiple comets, but one would be wasting time to do so.)

The “girl”—an adult woman, of course—does have a name, Janet, though no others are disclosed.  Her full name would have to be (apologies to Alfred Hitchcock) Janet S. MacGuffin (“S” for Secondary), since she drives a part of the plot.  One of Scott’s challenges is to keep her safe from . . . well, let her tell it.  She says that Chenery “did keep the others from—harming me.” Such an eloquent dash! 

But clearly, as in last year’s Killer Ship, women have no role in tough situations other than to create the need for men to protect them.  At one point, Scott parks Janet for safekeeping in one of the Checkpoint’s lifeboats, gives her a snap course in operating it if necessary, and reassures her: “It’s not a very good chance.  But there aren’t many women who could make it a chance at all.  I think you can.” She doesn't have to try.  Later, though, Scott gives her something to do—maneuver the station to avoid comet debris while he’s busy elsewhere—and she blows it.  But he promises himself not even to hint at criticizing her, and at the end, after all is safely resolved, she is performing women’s other function in Leinster’s fiction as she and Scott get better acquainted.

This one is a little less vapid than Killer Ship, and considerably less irritating, since it lacks the constant reminders that interstellar travel will be just like the eighteenth century.  It’s just as verbose as Killer Ship, but the padding is a little better connected to what is actually going on in the story, and there is a bit more cleverness to the plot.  So, two stars for this played-out and left-behind author. 

Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday, by Philip K. Dick

The other new story is Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday, by the more-prominent-every-day Philip K. Dick, which once more vindicates my warning: when big names show up at the bottom of the market, there’s a reason for it.  This is a story about time running backwards.  It starts with a guy getting up in the morning (wait a minute—morning?), getting some dirty clothes to put on, and picking up a packet of whiskers to glue evenly onto his face, presumably to be absorbed over the course of the day.  So where do these whiskers come from, and who puts them into packets, and how are they distributed?  What happens if you run out?  And why does anyone bother with them?


by Gray Morrow

It goes on.  People begin conversations with “good-bye” and end with “hello,” but they don’t talk backwards in between.  Et cetera.  Sorry, it doesn’t work.  PKD’s specialty is making preposterous ideas at least momentarily plausible, but this one is too long a stretch.  It’s not enough for the reader to suspend disbelief; for this story you’d have to shoot it out of a cannon.

There’s more, of course, but not better.  Dick does have enough knack as a storyteller to keep things readable as the reader fumes over the contradictions, so, two stars.

The Voice of the Void, by John W. Campbell, Jr.

The Voice of the Void was John W. Campbell, Jr.’s fourth published story, from the Summer 1930 Amazing Stories Quarterly, and at first it’s sort of refreshing: the story of humanity’s quest for survival as the sun is burning out, first disassembling large parts of the solar system and moving pieces closer to the sun, then looking for a new home around a younger or longer-lived star. 


by Hans Wessolowski

The story is about 98% character- and dialogue-free, though the astronomer Hal Jus has several cameos along the way.  Instead, it chronicles a long course of human discovery and problem-solving, grandiose and grave in equal measure.  It is a little reminiscent of Edmond Hamilton’s Intelligence Undying of a few issues back, if that story had been administered a mild sedative.

But things turn dark soon enough.  Humanity wants Betelgeuse for its new home.  But it turns out there’s no vacancy there—that system is inhabited by energy beings who don’t take kindly to human invasion.  Allegedly they are not intelligent, but their facility at fatally repelling unwanted visitors suggests otherwise.  Now, Betelgeuse is not necessary to human survival.  There’s another star handy; it doesn’t have planets, but the human fleet is so large that humanity could hang out for a few years in orbit and build some suitable planets.  But we want Betelgeuse!  So the indigenes have to go, and are exterminated in a siege of human-devised energy rays.

Well, that puts a damper on things.  Gratuitous genocide can ruin one’s whole reading experience.  Two stars with clothespin on nose.

The Gone Dogs, by Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert’s The Gone Dogs (November 1954 issue) is a slightly more interesting bad story than many, rather crudely written—surprisingly so, since it appeared only a year before Herbert’s much more capable and ambitious Under Pressure a/k/a The Dragon in the Sea.  On the other hand, it’s free of the turgidity of his current work, especially the characters’ internal monologues about the motives and intentions of one another.  Pick your poison. 

In the story, an artificially mutated virus is killing off all the world’s dogs, abetted by the fact that humans carry the virus; how to save the species?  One solution, highly unauthorized, is to give the last few to the Vegans, who are trying to breed dogs, or something like them.  Matters are enlivened along the way by a psychotic dog lover who’s determined to grab one of the last living dogs for herself (and will kill it with the virus she’s carrying).  At the end there's a slightly silly and anticlimactic twist.

One thing that’s annoying here is the hyper-facile and acontextual (thoughtless, for short) deployment of standard components from the SF warehouse.  At one point the main character needs to dodge a congressional subpoena.  What better way than to flee to Vega?  All by himself, with a forged pass to a faster-than-light spaceship which any idiot, or at least a biologist, can apparently navigate solo across interstellar distances, without notice and whenever the need arises.  There’s no reason in the rest of the story to believe in this capability.  This sort of thing was common in ‘50s SF but that doesn’t make it more palatable.  Two stars.

The Pent House, by David H. Keller, M.D.

David H. Keller, M.D., is in the position, unusual for him, of providing the least ridiculous story in the issue, chiefly because he essays so little.  The Pent House, from the February 1932 Amazing, is a minor exercise in benign crankiness.  A rich guy who is also a doctor discovers that humanity is about to be wiped out by the spread of a cancer germ, so he sets up a nice sealed-off apartment on top of a tall building, makes arrangements for a generous supply of life’s necessities and amenities, and advertises for a couple who really like each other to take on a lucrative job for five years.  The lucky winners persuade him to stay with them in the (large) apartment. 


by Leo Morey

Blissful years pass.  The woman of the couple is not feeling well, so the old rich doctor goes in to look at her and some hours later tells the husband, “It’s a girl.” He hadn’t noticed his wife’s pregnancy.  Maybe this is not the least ridiculous story here after all.

More time passes, the five years are up, and the old guy goes downstairs to check things out.  Turns out the cancer epidemic was thwarted by medical science.  So things are the same?  No—noisier, dirtier, generally less civilized (to summarize an extensive rant).  “It seemed to me that the world has escaped the cancer death so it could die from neurasthenia,” pronounces the doctor.  He’s ready to pay the couple the fortune they have earned and bid them adieu, but the wife says forget it, just order up some more supplies and let’s lock the door for another five years of "Heaven in a penthouse."  Two stars for competent rendering discounted for triviality.

The Man Who Knew All the Answers, by Donald Bern

The Man Who Knew All the Answers, from the August 1940 Amazing, is bylined Donald Bern, who was actually Al Bernstein, who has half a dozen or so credits in Amazing and Fantastic Adventures in 1940-42, and nothing else in the SF magazines.  Frankly, just as well.  This is a silly story about a nasty guy named Scuttlebottom, who stumbles (literally) into Ye Village Book Stall, and encounters the proprietor (“He wore a pince-nez.  He looked exactly like a person who wears a pince-nez.”), who sells him a book called The Dormant Brain.  The book teaches him to become telepathic, so now he knows what everybody thinks of him, which is unpleasant, and he then comes to a contrived bad end as a result of his new talent.  One star per the ground rules, despite this story’s utter lack of any reason for existing. 

The Metal Martyr, by Robert Moore Williams

Robert Moore Williams’s The Metal Martyr, from the July 1950 Amazing, is a mildly clever but overall pretty silly story about a robot, named Two, who develops the delusion that he is a man—this in the far future, long after a rumored rebellion by robots against humans, and the fall of human civilization.  Two flees the robot enclave to avoid having its brain dissolved and replaced, and comes across a couple of humans, named Bill and Ed, never mind the intervening millennia.  Two visits them at their home cave, but some of the humans get scared and threaten it, so Two flees deeper into the cave.  There it discovers the remains of an ancient mining site full of machinery, skeletons, and books explaining the past and how things got to their present metal-poor state—and showing no robots, revealing that humans once did just fine without them.  Two recovers from its delusion of humanity.  After giving the humans their past back (although they, unlike robots, can’t read), Two heads back to robotdom and its rendezvous with the acid vat.


by Edmond B. Swiatek

Williams was once a titanically prolific contributor to pulps of all genres, but most frequently SF and fantasy, and within them, most frequently to Ray Palmer’s Amazing and Fantastic Adventures, where he was part of the regular crew that filled those magazines with juvenilia.  Palmer was gone before this one appeared, but it is true to the tradition.  Two stars, charitably.

Summing Up

There’s not much to say.  The last issue finally achieved consistent readability, a first for the Sol Cohen regime.  Now, back into the murk and muck.




3 Comments Leave A Comment
Serial

[July 20, 1966] An Endless Summer (August 1966 Fantasy and Science Fiction)

8 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

Surf's up!

My daughter and I are dyed-in-the-wool beach lovers.  We live just 10 miles from the shore, and now that Highway 78 is a real two-lane throughway, it's a snap to head down to Carlsbad for a jump in the waves.  I'm not a real surfer, mind you.  Water terrifies me.  But every year, I muster enough courage to try body surfing and belly boarding, and after the first wipe-out or two, it's "Cowabunga!" and fun for the rest of the afternoon.

We came back from our latest coastal excursion to pick up a viewing of The Endless Summer, a documentary of two Malibutians as they traveled around the world in pursuit of the perfect wave (which they find in the most improbable of places!) It's a great film, and highly recommended.

Hang Ten

I was in for a pleasant surprise when I got home.  According to Mike Moorcock, summer is when sf mags publish their worst stuff since readership is at its lowest.  I wasn't looking forward to this month's issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but aside from one dud, it actually turned out to be quite a decent book.


by Gray Morrow

The Productions of Time (Part 1 of 2), by John Brunner

Murray, a sauced-up actor on the wagon, is hired for a most unorthodox production by a most unorthodox producer, name of Delgado.  Murray is sequestered in a country inn with a number of other talented but problematic performers.  One has a heroin addiction.  Two are homosexuals.  One has a pornography habit.  Moreover, all of them have their weaknesses tempted: our hero keeps finding booze in his room (he angrily calls for its removal), the addict discovers a two ounce flask of horse in his, the obscenity-junky is well-supplied in copies of Fanny Hill and the like, etc. 

Things get even weirder when Murray discovers that all of the beds in the inn are wired with tape recorders.  When confronted, a testy Delgado says they're for hypno-learning, but the recorders don't have speakers!  The televisions are also strangely equipped with extra electronics, and they are wired to a central control system in a locked room.

The producer's eccentricities and the cast's friction notwithstanding, the troupe manage to put together a pretty good impromptu show.  Whereupon Delgado denigrates Murray's perfect performance and demands the whole thing be scrapped.  Is it part of his technique?  Or is the play never meant to be completed, part of a larger experiment.

This story feels very Leiberian, perhaps because of the subject matter.  It was slow to engage, but by the end, I was sorely disappointed that I'd have to wait a month to read the resolution.

Four stars thus far.


by Gahan Wilson

Matog, by Joan Patricia Basch

A contemporary of Paracelsus is retained by a local Baron to summon a demon.  He succeeds but is unaware of the deed as the fiend appears behind him.  For the duration of the creature's captivity on our plane, he is kept company by the summoner's charming young daughter, who has fallen for the Baron's son.

What ensues is an all's-well-that-ends-well tale involving a much-put-upon demon, whose reputation for evil and mischief is largely human ascribed (though not entirely), a thwarted romance, and a surprisingly effective set of veterinary medicines.

Fun fluff in a pleasantly archaic style.  Three stars.


by Ed Emshwiller

The Seven Wonders of the Universe, by Mose Mallette

Humans pierce the boundary between universes and find themselves in need of a travel brochure to encourage tourism.  This is that brochure.

One of the dumbest non-fact articles I've yet read and too obsessed with sex.  One star.

For the Love of Barbara Allen, by Robert E. Howard

This hitherto unpublished story is perhaps the last composed by the Conan creator before he killed himself.  It involves time travel, the Civil War, and enduring love.  Pleasant enough, though more interesting for the circumstances around its creation than its content.

Three stars.

Meteroid Collision, by Theodore L. Thomas

Thomas suggests in this science fact vignette that micrometeoroids be used to power spacecraft.  They'd hit a piezoelectric hull that would harness their intense energies.

Cute, but 1) I suspect the efficiency would be very low, and 2) there just aren't that many micrometeoroids.  Solar cells are cheaper, lighter, and work all the time.

Think harder, Ted.  Two stars.

Letter to a Tyrant King, by Bill Butler

Cute doggerel composed at the end of the Cretaceous, one dinosaur to another.  Three stars.

A Matter of Organization, by Frank Bequaert

A cog in the corporate machine ends up in a Hell that is all too familiar.  Can his cunning and bureaucratic prowess keep him from eternal torment?

A nice twist on the classic formula.  Three stars.

Near Thing, by Robin Scott

Expansionist aliens call off an impending invasion of Earth after encountering smog.

Silly, overdone, and eminently forgettable.  Two stars.

BB or Not BB, That Is the Question, by Isaac Asimov

I've been waiting for a good piece comparing the Steady State and Big Bang theories of cosmology, and The Good Doctor has delivered.  One of the best articles of the year from any source.

Five stars.

Come Lady Death, by Peter S. Beagle

Bookending this issue with quality is the first story I've read by Mr. Beagle (apparently a reprint from 1963).  A wizened socialite decides her swansong party shall include an invitation to Death.  The encounter is unusual in many ways.

I shan't spoil the plot as this lovely piece is worth reading.  Suffice it to say that the author has a light, compelling style, and I look forward to more fantastic works by him.

Four stars.

Back to Shore

That was pleasant.  Sure, there was a lot of mediocrity 'round the middle, but the take-off and landing were quite nice.  And there's every indication that next month's reading will be excellent: it will feature the second half of the Brunner novel and a new The People story by Zenna Henderson!

Here's to a nice long summer.




8 Comments Leave A Comment
Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[July 18, 1966] Arrivals and Departures (Doctor Who: The War Machines)

2 Comments


By Jessica Holmes

The third series of Doctor Who comes to a close, and it ends on a high note! Ian Stuart Black returns as a writer to bring us a high-concept sci-fi thriller set in modern London: The War Machines.

EPISODE ONE

The first thing that strikes you when watching this serial are the high-tech and creative title cards. It’s fitting to the theme of the serial, and I hope more serials will do the same. It’s a nice touch.

Arriving in contemporary London, the Doctor and Dodo take notice of the recently completed Post Office Tower. Here, it’s a front for a top-secret science project. In real life, as we all know, it’s where all the pigeons of London go to roost in between delivering the post. You can look it up if you like.

The Doctor, curious about the tower and following his gut instinct, heads up for a tour. The pair meet a computer scientist, Professor Brett (John Harvey). He eagerly shows them his life’s work: the thinking computer, WOTAN (Will Operating Thought ANalogue). Wotan also happens to be another spelling of Wōdan, a name for the Norse god Odin. Odin was associated with both wisdom and war. Additionally (and if this is deliberate, it’s absolutely brilliant), the name stems from the proto-Germanic *Wōđanaz, which has the meaning ‘leader of the possessed’. This is incredibly apt, as you’ll soon see.

The computer soon shows itself to be as smart as Brett claims, even correctly guessing what the acronym TARDIS means. But how did it know?

Prof. Brett introduces him to his secretary, Polly (Anneke Wills). We’ll be getting to know a lot more of Polly. While the Doctor continues to poke around the machine, Polly invites Dodo to the hottest nightspot in town – the Inferno.

At the bar, the pair meet Ben (Michael Craze), a down-in-the-dumps seaman stuck on shore duty. After Polly tries and fails to cheer him up with a bit of a flirt, she finds herself accosted by an impertinent idiot who doesn’t understand the word ‘no’. Ben comes to the rescue. That's all good. I was impressed with him for standing up to the creep. And then he had to go and RUIN it. How? By scolding Polly and telling her she ought to be careful who she encourages. The cheek!

I would have handled it a lot less gracefully than Polly does, and with language that would even make sailor-boy blush.

The Doctor attends a scientific club meeting led by Sir Charles Summer (William Mervyn), whose role in all this I’m not entirely clear on. He is extraordinarily posh. At the meeting, Sir Charles explains that WOTAN is going to be connected to an international network of computers. It will act as a central, impartial controller for all these computers – including those used for military applications. What could go wrong?

Prof. Brett is late for the meeting, having become suspicious that there’s an intruder in the building. He can’t shake the feeling that someone or someTHING is watching him. Then a discordant buzzing sound comes from the supercomputer. It turns almost melodic as it takes control of him, pulling him towards the machine…

The press conference is about to wrap up when Brett suddenly bursts in and asks to speak to another scientist, Krimpton (John Cater), and they both head back to the tower.

There, Major Green (Alan Curtis), the representative from the Ministry of Defence on the project, is the next to be ensnared by the machine’s siren song. He makes a call to the Inferno Club and asks to talk to Dodo. She answers, and the Major connects the phone to the computer, transmitting the hypnotic tone, and bringing Dodo under WOTAN’s control.

Brett drags Krimpton before WOTAN. The machine has thought it over, and come to the conclusion that the world can’t progress further with mankind running things. It’s time for WOTAN to take over.

The Doctor comes to the Inferno club to find Dodo missing, but where could she be?

Where else, but with WOTAN?

In a genuinely unsettling moment, the machine laughs as its plans begin to come together. It’s an unearthly, warped sound, but definitely a laugh. The machine instructs Dodo that Doctor ‘Who’ is required, and commands her to bring him to the tower.

This is a very good start to the serial. It’s all rather sinister so far, and things are moving along at a good pace, but not so fast that it feels rushed.

EPISODE TWO

For WOTAN’s plans to take over London, Washington and Moscow to come to fruition, it must have an army. An army of machines. Considering it’s about to link up to all the military computers, couldn't it just nuke the world into submission?

Then again, that’s not as much fun. While it is tempting (and fun) to point out logical holes in fiction, or smarter ways for characters to achieve their goals, sometimes it’s just more fun if the characters do things the hard way. On the other hand, it is meant to be a hyper-intelligent supercomputer, so you'd think it'd do things the smart way.

For another thing, if this machine was really all that smart, it’d know that the Doctor is not literally called 'Doctor Who'. Yes, it’s the name of the programme, and yes, that's his name in the credits. That much is true. But nobody calls him that, including himself. That, and it just sounds weird.

At the club, Polly is about to start phoning round the hospitals when Dodo shows up, claiming to have been visiting some old friends. Nobody notices how odd she’s acting, and Dodo almost succeeds in leading the Doctor into an ambush while waiting for a taxi – which then shows up, scuppering her plans.

In a nearby warehouse, WOTAN has made short work of mind-controlling a bunch of workers, who are beginning to build a War Machine. An unwitting homeless bloke finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and WOTAN sets the workers on him.

Then the first of the War Machines emerges in all its tin-can glory. It’s like the offspring of one of NASA’s big computers and a Dalek.

The next morning, the Doctor is at the home of Sir Charles when he sees the homeless man’s face in the paper, and recognises him, having seen him the previous night. To Sir Charles’ surprise, Polly shows up, having been sent by Major Green (most likely to keep her out of the way).

Dodo is still acting strangely, and she suggests that she and the Doctor go and call on Brett. To be polite, the Doctor decides to call his office first. Krimpton can’t believe his luck, and puts him through to WOTAN.

The result is more funny than scary, if I’m honest. It’s like a scene from a rubbish B-movie: Attack Of The Living Telephones! He eventually gets the phone away from his ear and collapses into a chair. The mind control doesn’t appear to have taken, but Dodo gives herself away before realising this. Deducing that WOTAN has hypnotised Dodo, the Doctor takes advantage of her trance and puts her to sleep. Sir Charles offers to have his wife look after her at their country residence, so off she goes.

And she was never seen again.

No, really. But I’ll get to that later.

Polly returns to the Post Office Tower, but gets a nasty surprise, immediately realising that something is very wrong with the Professor.

Ben turns up at Sir Charles’ house (the neighbours must think there’s a party with all these people coming and going), having arranged to meet Polly for lunch. She’s not here, and the Doctor lets Ben know of the goings-on with regards to WOTAN, and Ben offers his assistance.

The Doctor asks him to look into the area where that homeless chap got murdered last night. Off Ben goes, soon finding the War Machine factory – and a War Machine being tested.

EPISODE THREE

Ben makes a narrow escape from the War Machine, soon running into a mind-controlled Polly, who locks him inside the warehouse. The workers capture him, and poor Ben faces death at the hands of the Machine when Polly intercedes, saying that WOTAN needs more workers to complete the War Machines on schedule.

They get to work, and while they toil Polly tells Ben about the coming attack. Ben notices that the workers haven’t even bothered to guard the door. I’m no omniscient supercomputer hell-bent on taking over the world, but if I were, I’d make sure ALL my underlings were mind-controlled. After all, we know WOTAN has the ability to hypnotise people remotely. It would have only taken one phone call and Ben wouldn’t even be able to think about escaping!

At the first opportunity, Ben slips away. Polly sees him go, but for some reason she doesn’t raise the alarm. Perhaps because deep down, she remembers that he’s her friend. On learning this, the Major sends her back to WOTAN for punishment.

Ben makes it back to Sir Charles and the Doctor and tells them what he saw. Realising they must act quickly, Sir Charles calls the army in to deal with the factory. The Doctor thinks it’d be a better idea to strike at the heart of the problem and shut down WOTAN, but for some reason Sir Charles won’t believe that Prof. Brett and WOTAN have anything to do with all this. The Watsonian explanation would be that he’s…I don’t know, stubborn? The Doylist way of looking at it would be that it would cut the serial an episode short. I think we have to cycle back to my point that sometimes it’s just more fun if characters aren’t 100% logical all the time.

The army arrives (with an array of quite obviously recycled shots to make it appear that there are more of them) and send in an advance squad.

It does not go well for them.

I thought initially there was a failure in the sound department as I couldn't hear any shots, but it seems that the War Machine has the ability to jam conventional weapons.

The Doctor and Ben arrive as the few survivors emerge from the warehouse, pursued by the Machine.

Everyone at the site flees, but the Doctor stands his ground…

EPISODE FOUR

…And we start off with a bit of a cop-out as the War Machine rolls right past the Doctor and then shuts down. Why? The workers hadn't finished programming it, so it didn’t know what to do with itself. Seems a little convenient if you ask me.

The news of the War Machine begins to spread over the airwaves. The Ministry of Defence warn the public that more attacks are expected, and to be on guard. It has a bit of a wartime feel to it that will surely strike a chill in all of us old enough to remember.

The other War Machines are ready for launch. One machine while receiving orders destroys the transceiver and then kills one of the men who built it, to the puzzlement of Brett back at the tower…and me, come to think of it. This plot detail doesn’t really seem to go anywhere? It seems as if this machine might have developed its own sense of self-awareness independent from WOTAN, but nothing more really comes of it. Perhaps WOTAN is issuing its own orders without human intermediaries.

At the warehouse, the Doctor talks to the Major, who seems to have come around from his hypnosis with no memory of his actions. I don’t really understand what made him come around. After all, WOTAN is still active.

Meanwhile, some poor bloke gets killed while trying to raise the alarm about having seen one of the War Machines.

Ben continues to worry about Polly, but the Doctor keeps fobbing him off. This is weird, and I had initially thought that the Doctor had some sort of plan to make use of Polly’s hypnotic state or something to that effect, but it seems that he just doesn’t care all that much. In fairness to him, he’s trying to save the world and Polly is just some woman he barely knows, but it does seem out of character.

The second War Machine is heading for the Battersea power station. The Doctor thinks they should capture it. He devises a trap to capture the War Machine within an electromagnetic field.

The War Machine rolls right into the trap, and the Doctor strolls up to have a look at it, knowing it can’t hurt him. Not that it doesn’t threaten to, for which the Doctor scolds it, which is pretty funny as it impotently waves its hammer about. The Doctor reprograms the War Machine to make it an ally, and sends it off to the Post Office Tower to destroy WOTAN.

The Doctor still doesn’t seem to care about Polly, so Ben runs off ahead to get her out of there. With some gentle persuasion (read: physically picking her up and carrying her out the door) he gets her out of the way before the War Machine shows up.

Krimpton dies trying to protect WOTAN, but the War Machine manages to finish the supercomputer off. Now that I think about it, the War Machines were nigh-indestructible, but WOTAN was just like any other computer. I think one guy would have done the job just as well with a sledgehammer. Or a really big magnet. Or a cup of coffee.

With WOTAN deactivated, all the other War Machines freeze in place, waiting for orders that will never come. Everyone who was mind-controlled returns to normal. All’s well that ends well…mostly.

The Doctor slips away to avoid dealing with the aftermath, and waits by the TARDIS for his faithful companion…who doesn’t show up. Ben and Polly arrive with a message from Dodo. She's feeling much better and has decided to stay in London. Oh, and she sends her love.

Gee.

The Doctor takes her through time and space and she doesn’t even come along to say ta-ta in person? If there was a contest for Worst Companion Exit, Dodo’s departure would win. From what I can gather, Jackie Lane’s contract expired mid-filming, but could they not have found a more elegant solution? Why not have the farewell mid-serial, and do it properly? If they wanted to be really bold, they could have killed her off a la Katarina.

Rather put out, the Doctor retreats into the TARDIS, with Ben and Polly following him. The doors shut behind them, and the ship departs into time and space.

Final Thoughts

So, that was The War Machines. Personally, I really enjoyed it. The serial has a very cinematic feeling to it. There's lots of interesting shots and location shooting, making it one of the most dynamic serials we've seen. I enjoyed the technological thriller aspect, minor quibbles with the plot aside. Though it definitely dropped the ball when it came to giving Dodo a proper sendoff, this is however a very strong companion introduction. Ben and Polly were worked into the story in an organic way, and I like them already (despite Ben’s shaming of Polly at their first encounter).

Polly is the sort of cool modern woman we’d all like to be. It’s a shame that she was mind-controlled for much of her appearance. All we really know is that she’s cool and she’s nice. Ben, though definitely a bit condescending, especially towards Polly, seems like a good soul at heart. He’s very brave, which is an important trait to have.

I’m a little surprised at the brevity of Dodo’s tenure as the Doctor’s companion. It feels like she’s barely even arrived and already she’s out the door. I liked her, but she didn’t really get a chance to distinguish herself much as anything other than Replacement Susan.

Polly’s already more distinct, and she’s only been around five minutes.

I look forward to seeing how this new TARDIS team work together– I think the rotating cast helps to keep the programme from getting stale.

Let’s see where things go from here, shall we?

4 out of 5 stars




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Science / Space Race

[July 16, 1966] Onward and Upward! (Apollo, Australia, and OV)

Leave a comment

Not a month goes by without some interesting tidbits on the space front.  Even between Gemini and Voskhod missions, there's always something going on, all over the world!


by Gideon Marcus

Heavy Lifting

We are used to space shots being manned spectaculars — brave men in space suits heading into the cosmos.  But the missions that precede the human-crewed flights are just as important.  On February 26 of this year, we saw the first full Apollo test flight.  It featured an old-style Command Module, the bit of Apollo that will house crew, but the Service Module was standard production line.  The rocket, too, is going to see service.  Unlike the Saturn 1, which flew ten test flights in a row with remarkable reliability, the Saturn 1B will be used for actual Apollo missions, at least ones that will take place in Earth orbit.

The February flight, dubbed AS-201, was not without problems.  Nevertheless, it comprised a successful launch and landing after a 37-minute suborbital flight.

AS-203, launched July 5, was strictly a booster test.  The goal was to see if the Centaur second stage of the Saturn 1B could restart successfully in orbit, a critical function for lunar missions.  As a booster test, the rocket stack looked a bit odd.  Instead of an Apollo capsule, there was simply a nosecone covering the second stage.  The deletion of even a boilerplate also meant that the rocket could carry more fuel for testing.  By the time the vehicle had reached orbit, there was still 20,000 pounds of hydrogen and 3,000 pounds of oxygen in its tanks.

For four orbits, NASA engineers subjected the vehicle to various stress tests.  Hydrogen and oxygen were vented in various quantities.  In its final orbit, hydrogen was vented but the oxygen vents kept closed to create a tremendous pressure differential.  This eventually caused the rocket to explode, but not before surviving twice the expected endurance of the vehicle.  Call that a success!

Next up will be AS-202, which was bumped to accommodate this flight.  It will be a suborbital test like AS-201, but the Apollo will have fully functional guidance and navigation systems to test.  A few more successful flights, and we'll be on our way to the Moon!

Fraternal Twins

The Air Force has gotten a lot out of its budget "Orbiting Vehicle" program.  The idea behind the program was to utilize space on rocket test launches for satellites using standardized, mass-produced bodies.  This meant a double-savings over custom-built missions on mission-specific flights. 

Of course, things don't always work out as planned.  There are at least three OV series now, and only the OV2s have used spare test flights (in their case, on Titan 3Cs).  The OV3 series uses purpose-launched Scout rockets.  The OV1s, instead of using space on test-launched Atlas rockets (save for the first one), have instead used spare Atlases that were decommissioned from military service last year.  Still, the rockets were just sitting there, so it's still cheaper than it could have been.

In any event, OV1-7 and OV1-8, launched on July 14, represent the second time a pair of OV1 satellites were orbited back-to-back.  This particular launch was a little unusual for two reasons.  Firstly, OV1-7 (a standard OV1 satellite) was supposed to be a particle physics and "earthglow" detector. But it never left its Atlas and fell back to Earth.

Secondly, OV1-8 wasn't an OV1 at all, really.  It was a big balloon.  And not just an ordinary balloon: it was actually an aluminum grid put into spherical shape by being embedded in inflatable plastic.  When OV1-8 got to orbit, it inflated.  The Sun's rays disintegrated the plastic leaving a hollow mesh sphere.  Called PaGeos (Passive Geosynchronous), OV1-8 orbits the Earth at the same rate as its rotation, keeping it pretty much in the same spot in the sky with reference to a ground-based observer. 

And what good is a hollow aluminum balloon?  Why, for bouncing messages off of!  Turns out PaGeos reflects signals five times as well as the old NASA Project Echo balloons.  Also, the hollow nature makes PaGeos much less susceptible to air drag, which shortens the lifetime of a satellite by eventually pulling it down to Earth.  PaGeos was shot into orbit backwards to maximize air drag, yet it is calculated to have a lifespan of four years. 

Though active satellites like Telstar and Syncom have largely replaced passive balloon satellites, the cheapness and durability of passive comsats like PaGeos suggests there may be a specialized use for them in years to come.  I guess we'll just have to wait and see!


by Kaye Dee

(Not) Going Up from Down Under

Hello everyone, Kaye here. Gideon has kindly allowed me an opportunity to provide a quick update on recent space events in Australia. While the British and Australian sounding rocket programmes keep expanding, the European Launcher Development Organisation’s Europa launcher program at Woomera has had its first major failure-and one that was not the fault of the rocket itself!

Following the three successful test flights of the Blue Streak first stage, ELDO F-4 was intended to be the first all-up test of the three-stage Europa vehicle. The first stage was active, with the French second stage and the West German third stage inert dummies. The rocket was also carrying a dummy test satellite that carried some instrumentation to measure the conditions that a real satellite would experience during launch.

Although the 24 May lift-off went perfectly, the impact predictor soon reported that the rocket was veering west of the planned trajectory. At 136 seconds the Range Safety Officer terminated the flight, with the debris raiding down into the lower part of the Simpson Desert. To the disappointment of all involved, the post-flight analysis revealed that the rocket had, in fact, been exactly on course, and inaccurate readings had been received at the Mirikata downrange radar station 120 miles away. Oops! ELDO is now preparing for a new all-up test later this year, possibly in November. 

Waking a Sleeping Beauty

Australia has also recently played a special role in the Surveyor mission currently on the Moon. After the solar-powered probe shut down during the two week lunar night, the task of bringing it back to operational life was entrusted to the NASA Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station, outside Canberra. The re-awakening process on 8 July was a complete success and the space tracker who sent the "wake up" command was jokingly given a special citation: the Prince Charming Award!

[…and that's the space news for this week.  Stay tuned for full Gemini 10 coverage next week!]




No comments Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 14, 1966] October's Judgment (July Galactoscope)

Leave a comment

This month's Galactoscope features a pair of tales from two of the genre's bigger names.  Just the sort of mid-summer pick-me-up to get you through the Dog Days… Siriusly!"


by Gideon Marcus

October the First is Too Late, by Fred Hoyle

Fred Hoyle, a prominent British astronomer and also a popular science fiction author (recently of A for Andromeda fame) has come out with quite an interesting little novel.  October the First is Too Late is several things in one, which I suppose makes sense given the subject.

The story begins in modern day.  Our protagonist, Richard, is a rather prominent composer coming off a disappointing show in Germany.  He meets up with an old college buddy, a brilliant physicist (John Sinclair), and the two head off to the Scottish Highlands for a trek.  It's a pleasant jaunt with one odd episode: halfway through, John disappears for 30 hours, and when he turns up, he is missing a birthmark he's had all his life.

Coincident with this, the interplanetary rocket for which John prepared some of the experiments has detected odd emanations from the Sun.  Perhaps they are modulations of an extraterrestrial beacon system, or maybe their tremendous energies have a more sinister purpose.  Sinclair and our viewpoint character head to Hawaii to process the latest data — only to find themselves hurled into a crazy, splintered world.  Hawaii is alright, and Fiji, and maybe England.  But the rest of the world has become a jumble of different timezones, assembled like a strange jigsaw puzzle. 

Why has this happened, and if it be an artificial occurrence, who is responsible?

October is a strange, meandering piece.  It hardly does anything for 52 pages, then becomes an exciting voyage of discovery.  The last third is something else yet again, something like G.C. Edmondson's The Ship that Sailed the Time Stream.  It shouldn't work, with its chatty digressions and frequent scientific/philosophical expositions…and yet it does.  October is a highly readable, breezily intelligent novel.  It's one I can see myself picking up again for a few more reads, and I imagine it could appear on next year's Hugo ballot.

Four stars.

The Judgment of Eve, by Edgar Pangborn


by John Boston

Edgar Pangborn is one of the finer writers and more luminous spirits to grace SF’s disreputable precincts.  After winning the International Fantasy Award for his second SF novel, A Mirror for Observers (1954), he took a detour and published a historical novel, Wilderness of Spring (1957), and a contemporary novel, The Trial of Callista Blake (1961).  But in 1964 he returned to SF with Davy, a post-nuclear-war story which made the Hugo ballot and to my taste probably should have won.

Davy portrayed a world centuries after nuclear war in which our present society's knowledge has mostly been lost, and the remainder forbidden by a repressive church.  That is, absolutely nothing original; the book was made by the characters and by the vivid detail in which Pangborn imagined a world whose outlines have grown all too familiar during the post-Hiroshima course of SF.  The frame is that Davy is writing a memoir of his picaresque adventures, with a goodly dollop of libertarian philosophizing along the way.  The result is sometimes reminiscent of Mark Twain, though hints of Jubal Harshaw drift in occasionally.


by Lawrence Ratzkin

Pangborn’s new novel The Judgment of Eve is another, and less satisfactory, kettle of fish.  It is set about 30 years after the war, which it turns out involved few actual bombs, but a long siege of plagues, greatly depopulating the world but not irradiating it.  Eve Newman, 28 years old, lives with her elderly and blind mother in a farmhouse far down a gravel side road; they’ve had no contact with other humans for many years, except for Caleb, seemingly a half-witted mutant.

Then three guys show up at the door, fleeing from a repressive settlement, and of course they are all smitten by young Eve, and she is smitten by the idea of having a mate.  But she has to make a choice, obviously (at least in this book’s moral universe).  So she sets them all a task: go forth and figure out what love is, and report back at the beginning of October, a few months away.  The rest of the book consists of the separate accounts of what each suitor does and finds before their reunion at Eve’s place.

Sounds like a fairy tale, and if you don’t figure it out on your own, the point is rubbed in by a brief reading from Grimm before Eve issues her orders.  Further, this purports to be a critical edition of the Judgment of Eve legend by scholars of later centuries, meaning that as you read the novel, obtrusive commentary pops up all too frequently concerning the relative plausibility of this and other versions, with occasional bursts of sarcasm concerning competing scholarly points of view.

It’s unusual to see a writer so gifted get in his own way so conclusively.  Pangborn is an unassumingly graceful stylist and a compelling story-teller, with a special talent for portraying physical settings and for convincingly developing the inner life of his characters.  The supposed critical commentary here has about the same effect on the reading experience as auto horns honking outside the window, while the fairy-tale frame distances the reader from the otherwise engaging story and characters. 

But still, most of the time it’s a pleasure to read.  Pangborn’s failure is more worthwhile than many writers’ successes.  Three and a half stars.




No comments Leave A Comment
Magazine, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 12, 1966] Cool It! (August 1966 Worlds of Tomorrow)

2 Comments


by Victoria Silverwolf

The Long, Hot Summer

There has been intense heat in many major cities in the eastern United States this month, particularly over the Independence Day weekend. On Sunday, July 3, New York City reached an all-time high for that date with a temperature of 107 degrees. Newark wasn't far behind, at 105 degrees, and Philadelphia was close, with 104.


And Long Island, too.

Cold, Cold Heart

As if editor Frederik Pohl wanted to help us forget about the blistering heat wave, the latest issue of Worlds of Tomorrow is centered around a topic that is literally chilling.


Cover art by Paul E. Wenzel.

Before we step into the freezer, however, let's take a look at the lead story, mistakenly called a Complete Short Novel on the title page, although even the magazine's table of contents admits that it's just a novelette.

Heavenly Host, by Emil Petaja


Illustrations by Jack Gaughan.

Our hero's name is Kirk. If what I read in the trade papers is correct, that is also the name of the main character in the upcoming science fiction television series Star Trek. I assume that's just a coincidence. I guess Kirk is a good, manly name.

Anyway, this Kirk serves aboard a spaceship. He's a bit of a rebel, and winds up punching the tyrannical captain of the vessel. He's thrown into the brig, but manages to escape in a sort of lifeboat. (The implication is that the captain and the ship's cook kind of encouraged him to get away.)

This seems to be a case of jumping out of the frying pan and landing in the fire. (Pardon the corny metaphor. The heat must be getting to me.) Kirk winds up on a planet that is covered with a tangle of stinky vines. He manages to survive by eating the smelly plant and drinking rainwater, but life is hardly pleasant. There are holes here and there in the vines, so Kirk goes down to take a look around.


Exploring the world below.

After narrowly escaping being devoured by a giant worm, Kirk discovers that there's a wondrous Utopia under the odoriferous flora. He meets a beautiful woman, dancing gracefully, who quickly starts smooching on him and takes him on a boat ride.


A self-propelled gondola is the best way to travel in style.

At this point, the reader figures that the woman is just a figment of Kirk's imagination. Her name is Sombra, Spanish for shadow, which seems at first to be another hint that she's a phantom. Besides that, we already know that Kirk has imaginary conversations with his wise Mexican grandfather. However, she and the lovely community wherein she dwells turn out to be quite real.


Is this the Emerald City of Oz?

It seems that a bunch of colonists landed on the planet long ago, and managed to create a society without want, the population devoting all its time to artistic endeavors. This seemingly impossible task, they say, was done with the help of a benign deity called Hur. Kirk and Sombra are in love, of course, and he's eager to marry her, but things change when he gets his first look at the god responsible for this paradise.


Kirk meets Hur.

This is a strange story. It starts off as a tale of survival, becomes something of a wish-fulfillment fantasy, adds a touch of horror, and ends in an ambiguous fashion. I wouldn't call it boring, but I never believed anything that was happening. (One major quibble occurs to me: the people in the utopian city claim that they depend on folks like Kirk showing up to avoid inbreeding. Am I supposed to believe that people randomly land on this seemingly worthless planet frequently?)

Two stars.

Immortality Through Freezing, by Long John Nebel, et al.

This is actually an abridged transcript of a panel discussion broadcast on a New York City radio station. The topic is the possibility of freezing people at the moment of death and reviving them in the future, when medical technology will be able to cure their ailments and bring them back to life.

Besides the host, radio personality Long John Nebel, the group included Frederik Pohl, editor of this very magazine; R. C. W. Ettinger, who wrote a book on the subject, an excerpt from which appeared in the second issue of Worlds of Tomorrow; Joseph Lo Presti, an ophthalmologist; Shirley Herz, a public relations consultant; and the famous pianist/comedian Victor Borge.

That's an oddly mixed group of folks, and I wonder if they just happened to grab whoever was hanging around the radio station at the time. In any case, the guests discuss the definition of death and whether extreme cold could keep people in a state of suspended animation. This is nothing new to science fiction fans, and it pretty much just rehashes the previous article I mentioned. At least the subject matter might help you feel a little cooler and beat the heat.

Two stars.

Deliver the Man!, by Ray E. Banks


Illustrations by Norman Nodel

A starship is on its way to a conference of various alien civilizations. It seems that Earth is considered as something of a backwater, worthy only of being conquered. The ambassador aboard the vessel must reach the meeting on time and manage to convince the extraterrestrials otherwise.

Complicating matters is the fact that Martian colonists, now the enemies of Earth, attack the ship while it's on its way. A space battle follows.


A female warrior in a dogfight in space.

Our hero comes to the rescue of an inexperienced pilot, saving her bacon when she faces two opponents at once. She is hurt but survives the skirmish, only to face further challenges aboard the vessel.


Injured in battle.

There's a planet that insists the ship wait around while they celebrate an anniversary, so that the ambassador will be much too late to save Earth from destruction. The captain stays behind, allowing the vessel to sneak away, although he knows this will mean his death when the deception is discovered. An unpleasant fellow takes command, leading to a love triangle that ends in tragedy.


A crime of passion.

As if that weren't enough trouble, there's the possibility that an alien spy, disguised as a human being, is aboard the ship, intending to sabotage the mission. More deaths follow.


Another murder aboard ship.

All seems hopeless by the end, until our hero steps up and does what has to be done. The conclusion involves the ship's navigator, an eccentric woman who also serves as the hero's love interest.


The enigmatic navigator.

There's certainly enough action going on to satisfy readers looking for slam-bang adventure. The hero has so many obstacles in his way that it almost becomes ludicrous. You also have to assume that starship officers are going to act in completely irrational ways out of sexual jealousy.

Although partly depicted as objects of lust, it was nice to see women aboard the ship in important positions. The navigator, in particular, is an interesting character, although you'll probably figure out what role she plays in the plot.

Two stars.

The Most Delicious Foe, by Lawrence S. Todd


Illustrations by the author.

Our hero runs a business that will perform just about any service for the right fee. (I was reminded of Robert A. Heinlein's 1941 story "–We Also Walk Dogs". Proofreader, please note that the dash and quotation marks are part of the story's title.)

His latest job is to stop a war between two alien species. Each one wants to eat the other. The reptilian aliens just think the centipede-like aliens are tasty, while the centipede-like aliens savor the experience of imagining the lives of the reptiles while devouring them.


Two reptilian aliens read the news. Yes, the text states that they wear tam-o'-shanters.

Our hero has to figure out a way to please the appetites of both species in order to prevent wholesale slaughter.


Who is having whom for dinner?

As you can tell, this is a silly story, apparently intended as a comedy, although nothing particularly funny happens. The author is much better known as a cartoonist and illustrator, and he might want to stick to that line of work in the future.

Two stars.

Tom Swift and the Syndicate, by Sam Moskowitz

The indefatigable historian of all things related to science fiction delves into the subject of children's adventure books of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As the title suggests, the main focus is on the countless stories of Tom Swift and his amazing inventions. However, the article also includes many other endless series, such as Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. The bulk of these were plotted by a single man and actually written by a bunch of authors under house names. The Tom Swift, Jr., series continues to this day.

As usual, the author possesses an absolutely astounding amount of information about the subject. Also as usual, the resulting essay is less than compelling.

Two stars.

Homogenized Planet, by Allen Danzif


Illustrations by Dan Adkins.

One of the members of an exploration team on Mars goes off for several days, much longer than he could possibly survive with his limited air supply. Incredibly, he comes back just fine. In fact, he can survive in the extremely thin Martian atmosphere without any problems.

The other folks sedate him and strap him down during the voyage back to Earth. I guess they don't want to take the chance that he's really a Martian shapeshifter or something. Despite their precautions, things start to go wrong. People change from one person into another, or disappear entirely.


An eerie transformation.

At this point, you might think of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s 1938 novella Who Goes There?, with its shapeshifting alien. (Not so much the 1951 movie The Thing from Another World, which eliminated the shapeshifting. On the other hand, I was reminded of the 1958 film It! The Terror from Beyond Space.)

However, things turn out quite differently than expected, and the mood changes drastically. When we finally find out what's really going on, the premise is of some interest, but it requires pages and pages of exposition. The story really grinds down to a halt during its last section.

Two stars.

Island of Light, by Lawrence A. Perkins


Illustrations by Arkin. I have not been able to discover the artist's last name. Could it possibly be Alan Arkin, the star of this year's hit comedy The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming? He's had a couple of stories published in Galaxy.

In the near future, a city in the northwestern part of the United States takes drastic measures against crime. There is only one way to get into the place, which has expanded so greatly that it takes up part of three states. The normal activities of everyone in the city are recorded, so that computers can predict their whereabouts at any particular time with reasonable accuracy. There are many other methods used to ensure that it is nearly impossible to get away with a crime.


Citizens of Utopia?

A detective from outside the city arrives to observe the local crimefighters. A woman is beaten and robbed, left alive but in a coma. The investigation demonstrates the city's unusual methods, and reveals something about the visiting detective.

The premise is an interesting and provocative one, raising many questions about the proper way to balance freedom and security. Frankly, this story came as something of a relief after all those outer space adventures. The biggest flaw is that it's full of long expository speeches, as the local detective explains things to his guest.

Three stars.

We're Havin' a Heat Wave

Well, that was a disappointing issue, not doing much to take my mind off the hot weather. Perhaps the best way to use it would be to flap the pages against your face to cool down. Either that, or read it while sitting in a room made nice and comfortable by modern technology.


You don't really need to wear a snowsuit while running an air conditioner.

Tune in to KGJ, our radio station, for the coolest and the hottest hits!




2 Comments Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy

[July 10, 1966] Froth, Fun, and Serious Social Commentary (Sibyl Sue Blue)

1 Comment


by Janice L. Newman

Sibyl Sue Blue was not what I expected.

Set in the futuristic year of 1990, Rosel George Brown’s Sibyl Sue Blue takes place in a world both like and unlike today’s world of 1966. Sibyl is a tenacious and smart detective working for the city’s homicide department. When a series of bizarre ‘suicides’ start plaguing the city’s youth, she’s called in to investigate. As she follows the clues, she’s drawn into increasingly strange events, from trying alien drugs to being invited to join a spacefaring millionaire on an off-world jaunt.

Sounds like fun, right? Yet when Judith Merril told me the other day that she’ll be reviewing it in an upcoming issue of Fantasy and Science Fiction, she mentioned that “…under all the froth and fun and furious action, there is more acute comment on contemporary society than you are likely to find in any half dozen deadly serious social novels.”

She’s right!

Cover of the original Sibyl Sue Blue
The cover of Sibyl Sue Blue shows her smoking her signature cigar.

That’s not to say that Sibyl Sue Blue is dry, boring, or preachy. In fact, it’s the exact opposite of these things. But, as Merril promised, beneath the wild ride exists a sharp yet understated criticism of both modern racial tensions and treatment of women in science fiction.

Let’s take racial tensions, for example. When I say that SSB offers subtle commentary on race relations, I’m not talking about the obvious parallels between the story’s alien Centaurians and modern day Black people. That analogy is obvious to anyone with half a brain: places where the ‘aliens’ have moved in have become ghettos, they smoke strange cigarettes, and they are generally distrusted by the native human population – but if you’re a cop, you don’t dare say so.

I’ll admit, it threw me for a loop at first. What was with this heavy-handed analogy? It wasn’t until I read further into the story that I got it. The subtlety comes into play in Sibyl’s interactions with Centaurians, as well as Brown’s portrayal of them. Throughout the story Sibyl treats Centaurians the same way she treats humans. Though she warns her colleague not to get caught saying he doesn’t like Centaurians, never once does Sibyl herself express dislike or distrust of a Centaurian simply because they are Centaurian. In fact, though the story opens with her being attacked by a Centaurian, her sharp mind is already searching for the reason behind his actions.

Then, too, Brown’s portrayals of Centaurians are as variegated as her portrayals of humans. They’re not saints, but they’re no worse than anyone else, and better than many. And like humans, they can be coerced, manipulated, and used by people or entities more powerful than themselves.

There’s a certain cynicism coloring everything. The good-hearted and earnest “Jimmy” says things like, “Gee, it’s a shame about Centaurian prejudice,” and sounds hopelessly naive. Yet only a couple of chapters later, Sibyl doesn’t hesitate to invite her Centaurian friend, contact, and occasional lover over for some info and an intimate pick-me-up. The contrast between Sibyl’s attitude and Jimmy’s is telling. It’s not enough to criticize prejudice, Sibyl (and Brown) seems to be saying. You need to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. And Sibyl walks it – boy, does she!

Rosel George Brown
Rosel George Brown, author of Sibyl Sue Blue.

Speaking of walking the walk, another thing that startled me, at least until I got what Brown was doing, was the story’s ‘romantic’ subplot.

Multiple science fiction magazines and occasional science fiction novels, TV shows, and movies are released every month in the USA and the UK. In a good month, maybe ten percent of the fifty or sixty stories published are penned by women. In a bad month, none of the stories are written by a woman. The average usually falls somewhere in-between.

Perhaps it isn’t a surprise, then, that so few protagonists of science fiction tales are women. Whether written by men or women, whether they’re complex and interesting or shallow and flat, main characters are overwhelmingly white men. When women do show up, they’re often relegated to the role of helpmate, something in need of rescuing, or the prize the man wins after overcoming his trials – sometimes all three!

Obviously, there are plenty of exceptions, but in terms of trends, if a beautiful woman is introduced into a story (or a TV show, or a movie) in the first act, chances are she’ll fall in love with the male lead by the end. This is true regardless of how unappealing, uninteresting, or unlikeable the man is.

This cliché is another that Sibyl Sue Blue turns on its head. What is it like to be the woman who seemingly inexplicably falls for a rich, handsome, clever, yet completely terrible man? What happens when a woman who is herself independent, interesting, and already has her own life suddenly gets caught up in the implacable tide of the plot?

Traditionally, the woman marries the man after he solves the case and the two live ‘happily’ ever after. But as I found when I kept reading, if the woman is someone like Sibyl Sue Blue, nothing will turn out the way you expect!

Sibyl is fascinating. She’s small but powerful, repeatedly shown as able to hold her own in a fight, even against men who are bigger than she. Yet she’s also unapologetically feminine. She enjoys wearing nice dresses, applying makeup, and accessorizing. Far from being stoic, when something terrifying and grotesque happens, she screams. When she’s overwhelmed, she cries.

And then she gets up and keeps going. Like so many women throughout history, when faced with circumstances far beyond her control, when she’s sick and exhausted and frightened, she keeps pushing forward.

Rosel George Brown and her children
Rosel George Brown and her children.

Sibyl Sue Blue has silver stripes in her hair and a daughter in high school. She’s strong and vulnerable and smart. She enjoys a startling amount of sexual freedom, unhesitatingly inviting handsome men to her bed as a matter of course. Above all, she is herself – not an easily categorized and dismissed ‘helpmate’, ‘damsel in distress’, or ‘prize’. She’s human and messy and makes mistakes and is sometimes clever. She’s as complex and interesting as the best of the male leads, and maybe even more than any of them.

Because I’ve read the stories of a lot of white men, but I’ve never met a character like Sibyl Sue Blue.

Get your copy of Sibyl Sue Blue from Journey Press today!

An ink drawing Sibyl Sue Blue
Custom bookplates with art by The Young Traveler available at a bookstore near you!




1 Comment Leave A Comment
Serial

[July 8, 1966] South Pohl (August 1966 Galaxy)

4 Comments


by Gideon Marcus

The Big Bang

The Americans and Soviets have signed onto a Partial Test Ban Treaty, restricting nuclear tests to deep underground. The Chinese and French are under no such obligation, however.  Not only have the Chinese detonated two (or was it three?) atomic devices in the open air, but now the French have begun their own series of above-grown tests.

These big bombs are being burst on the French Polynesian atoll of Moruroa.  I don't know what the indigenous South Seas population thinks of the blasts, but I imagine their opinions will sour as quickly as their strontium-90 laced milk.

The Big Fizzle


by Gray Morrow

The French may be making a big noise in the Southern Hemisphere, but Fred Pohl, editor of IF, Worlds of Tomorrow, and the formerly august Galaxy, has barely been squeaking by.  Indeed, the August 1966 issue of Galaxy is the most feeble outing I've read in a long time.

The Body Builders, by Keith Laumer


by Nodel

Opening things up, Keith Laumer extrapolates a future that is a straight-line evolution of our current boob tube culture.  Since so many of us are content to live vicariously, eyes plastered to the small screen, why not take things a few steps further?  And so a large portion of humanity lives flat on their backs, plugged into life support machines.  Their senses are hooked into humanoid surrogates of plastic and metal, optimized for task, emphasized for beauty. 

Our protagonist is a prize fighter, or at least, he remote controls a synthetic boxer.  Another artificial being provokes our hero into a duel while he's inhabiting his sport model body rather than his brawler suit.  So he goes on the lam.  Troubles, high jinks, and happy endings ensue.

Elements remind me of Robert F. Young's Romance in a Twenty-First Century Used-Car Lot (shuttling around in personally molded chassis) and Steel (human boxer steps into the ring against a robotic opponent), but this is a nice new spin.

Three stars.

Heresies of the Huge God by Brian W. Aldiss

A giant creature, thousands of miles long, crashes into the Earth.  Its bulk causes tremendous damage, alters our seasons, and thoroughly discombobulates our society.  This after-the-fact chronicle of the millennium following the alien's arrival is both unsettling and rather funny.

Four stars.

For Your Information: Scheherazade's Island by Willy Ley

This month's science column details the unusual creatures that inhabited Madagascar until quite recently: Big birds, giant lemurs, and other exotics.  They may, indeed, yet live there in remote areas of the enormous island.

Interesting topic but bland presentation.  Three stars.

The Piper of Dis by James Blish and Norman L. Knight


by Gray Morrow

Authors Blish and Knight return us to the overcrowded world of 2794 on which ten trillion humans live.  In this installment, the asteroid Flavia is headed toward Earth, where it will cause tremendous damage.  Millions of North Americans must be evacuated to the spare town of Gitler.  There are two wrinkles: 1) a convention of the Jones family is currently occupying the city, and they must be evacuated out before refugees can be evacuated in; 2) an insane criminal member of the Jones family, Fongavaro, doesn't want anyone in the city lest he be extradited back to his home in Madagascar.

Actually, there's another wrinkle: it's a dreary potboiler of a story in an implausible world.  I hope this is the last piece in the series.

Two stars.

Among the Hairy Earthmen by R. A. Lafferty

What if the Renaissance was really the work of bored aliens?  In this typically whimsical piece, a band of seven humanoid cousins arrive at medieval Europe and make history their plaything. 

This one of those tales that's all in the telling, and the telling is pretty charming.  Three stars.

The Look, by George Henry Smith

Women, hare-brained slaves to fashion that they all are, succumb to trends so horrendous that no man can bear to look at them.  It's the plot of a pair of homosexual fashion designers to ensure they have all of mankind to themselves.  Or so we're meant to think.  The "twist" is that it's actually a ploy of Alpha Centaurians to depopulate the Earth.

If we had a negative counterpart to the Galactic Stars, this would win the prize. One star.

Heisenberg's Eyes (Part 2 of 2) by Frank Herbert


by Dan Atkins

Last issue, we were treated to the first half of Frank Hebert's latest short novel.  It takes place in a far (like tens of thousands of years from now far) future in which the human race has completely stagnated in technology, society, and biology.  The "Optimen", sterile ubermenschen who are essentially immortal, rule over the mostly sterile humans whose offspring are all produced out of womb and with scrupulous surgical control.

Last installment, the Durant couple had stolen their embryo from under the noses of the Optimen with the help of the Cyborgs, a competing sub-race of humanity that has traded their emotions for computerized sturdiness.  The Durant embryo, due to some unexplained quirk, is the first bog-standard human to be spawned in millennia.  Able to reproduce, it may hold the key to toppling the static society of humanity.

This installment begins with the Durants stealthily escaping the megalopolis of Seatac. This takes up most of the part, and is ultimately pointless as the triumvirate of rulers is aware of their attempt the entire way.  The Durants, their assisting Cyborgs, as well as Svengaard, the surgeon they had taken hostage, are summoned before a full council of the Optimen for punishment.  Violence breaks out.  Two of the triumvirate are killed.  Calapine, the impulsive, simpering woman of the ruling trio, is both outraged and excited by the new feeling of mortality.  Nevertheless, she is committed to destroying her captives before they destroy the current order.

Until it is pointed out that the order is just its own kind of death, a sentence of eternal boredom.  In any event, it's doomed to failure since even the immortals need increasing doses of enzymes to stay alive, a situation that is quickly becoming untenable.

There is a solution!  It turns out that being implanted with an embryo produces all the enzymes one needs to stay alive indefinitely.  So women (and men) can be installed with pre-tykes that are made to gestate for thousands of years, and that will keep them alive forever.  Thus, humanity can return to some sort of natural (if prolonged) rhythm.

Never minding the utter implausibility of, well, everything about this book, all of the above could probably have been written in about 20 pages.  But when you're paid by the word, and you're one of the hottest authors in the genre (I can imagine a half century from now that Dune will replace The Bible as the most-read book in the world; there ain't no justice), I suppose sentences must flow.

Two stars for this part, two and half for the whole book.

Who Is Human? by Hayden Howard


by Jack Gaughan

Starting in medias res, we have the latest story of the Esks: people who look like Eskimos, but are actually born in a month and raised to adulthood in five years.  In this installment, which really does not stand alone as a separate story, we learn that the Esks have been artificially created by alien visitors.  We are meant to believe that 1) the Esks pose an intolerable risk to the human race as we will soon be outbred and replaced by them, and 2) no one will actually believe our protagonist, Dr. West, when he explains the true nature of the Esks.  Everyone maintains they're just plain ol' Eskimos.

This is the silliest, most contrived set of premises.  The Esks are already starving due to overpopulation, and thus applying for relief.  Once free food starts being doled out, the unnatural increase in population will be known.  This may spell adversity for the real Inuit (and the Canadian budget) but it hardly threatens world domination.  And it's not like we have a Puppet Masters situation here; the Esks don't possess other humans.  They just live alongside them. 

Maybe there will be a better explanation down the road.  Two stars.

Summer Slump

It's a pretty sad affair when Galaxy clocks in at a bare 2.5 stars.  On the other hand, as Michael Moorcock informed us last month, it is not uncommon for magazines to save their weakest material for the summer, when readership is at its lowest.  Let us hope that's what is going on here!

Ah well.  At least the summer music is good:

Tune in to KGJ, our radio station!




4 Comments Leave A Comment
Movies

[July 6, 1966] Baillie's Bailiwick–the Other Castro Street

Leave a comment


by Victoria Lucas

Experimental movies on the rise

Mel and I like this little tiny independent theater off Broadway in San Francisco where we're now living. We've seen some great experimental films there, funny and not so funny. From where we live it's only a few blocks to walk, they only show films on weekends, and they don't charge a lot because it's not a tourist attraction, so it's not a big expense or far to go. Many of the movies we see are shorts, as is the one I discuss here.

I just have to tell you about a film we saw there. They show films from Canyon Cinema and other experimental shorts and foreign films. We haven't been to a mass-production movie theater I think since we met. It's been live theater, foreign films, experimental films, or nothing. Neither of us is fond of Doris Day.


The other Castro Street

Anyway, the film is called "Castro Street." Like the music of John Cage, it changed my life. Whereas Cage taught me to listen, Bruce Baillie, the filmmaker of this wonder and founder of Canyon Cinema, taught me how to look *and* listen together, immersing myself in my environment and watching it cinematically, listening to the music life makes (or whatever is in my head). There is music in "Castro Street," bits of Erik Satie, one of my favorite composers, often in my head.

Just in case you're wondering, "Castro Street" has nothing to do with the Castro Street neighborhood in San Francisco, famous home to differently sexed people whose lifestyle is still not legal and still excoriated. This Castro Street is one in Richmond, home to oil refineries and railroads.


Another still from "Castro Street"

Musique Concrete means "Found Sound"

That is what we see and hear in "Castro Street," trains and industrial facilities, but not as in a documentary. There is no narrative, no story, no voices at all, not even anything to hang a story on. Even Canyon Cinema member Stan Brakhage's 1959 film "Window, Water, Baby, Moving," at least has a birth as a bit of a narrative. This particular thing is happening. Whereas, with Baillie, nothing is happening, or, as Cage said in his "Lecture on Nothing," "I have nothing to say (pause) and I am saying it." I like nothing.

It's only 10 minutes. See if you can find "Castro Street" and watch, listen to it. How many stars for this movie? All there are. There's a new one of Baillie's out, "All My Life," and the Ella Fitzgerald soundtrack is fine, but the visuals stand alone without it.


Bruce Baillie

"24 realities per second"

About another one of his films made this year, the 2-minute "Still, Life," Baillie is reported to have written to Brakhage, "The film manages, I think, to suggest how light itself is movement, how color is movement, and how the combined play of light and color reveal that this tableau represents not only a single reality but 24 realities per second. Being is seen as transitory; everything is in the infinite process of becoming." Yes. Oh, yes.

Live long, Bruce Baillie. I'm sure you have a lot more films in you.




No comments Leave A Comment
Book, Science Fiction/Fantasy, TV

[July 4, 1966] The Daughters of Jane Eyre (Gothic Romances and a New Soap Opera)

Leave a comment


by Victoria Silverwolf

From the Castle of Otranto to Northanger Abbey

Most literary historians state that the first Gothic novel was The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole. It set the pattern for later spooky stories. You know the type; mysteries, curses, hidden passages, innocent heroines prone to fainting, etc.


All that stuff about being translated from Italian by the nonexistent William Marshal is fictional. Note that the book was very popular, going through multiple editions.

Walpole's bestseller inspired many imitations. The genre was so popular that it was parodied in Jane Austen's posthumously published novel Northanger Abbey (1817), in which a naïve young woman who reads too much Gothic fiction imagines all sorts of dark secrets behind perfectly innocent situations.


It first appeared with Persuasion, another posthumous novel.

Frankenstein Meets Dracula

One of the most famous works of Gothic fiction appeared soon after, with the publication of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. This groundbreaking work, which one might think of as the first real science fiction novel, spawned countless adaptations and imitations, in the form of movies, comic books, and so forth.


It seems odd that authors didn't want their names on their books back in the old days.

I'm sure you're familiar with the scary stories that appeared during the Victorian era, from Edgar Allan Poe's chilling tales of madness and murder, to Bram Stoker's seminal vampire novel Dracula (1897).


The cover of the first edition. Looks very modern, doesn't it?

Isn't It Romantic?

Let me back up a little bit and mention the Brontë sisters, particularly Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Brontë's novel Jane Eyre, both published in 1847. Both books added a touch of romance to Gothic fiction, particularly the latter.


At least she used a pseudonym instead of being completely anonymous.

I hesitate to call Wuthering Heights a love story, although you might think it one if you've only seen the movie. The relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff in the book is more complex than simply a romance. (It's a very strange novel in many ways.)


Note that the book pretends to be a true account, and the similarity in pseudonyms. Their sister Anne Brontë used the pseudonym Acton Bell for her novels, which lie outside the topic of this article.

Jane Eyre is more obviously a romance, although it certainly contains elements of Gothic fiction as well. This blending of love and terror had an important influence on romantic novels of the current century, eventually leading to the marketing category of Gothic Romances.

(Just to make things completely clear, allow me to emphasize the fact that I am using the term Romances — note the capital letter — to refer to books sold as love stories. It should not be confused with the rather old-fashioned use of the word romance — note the small letter — to mean an imaginative tale, as in the archaic term scientific romance for what we now call science fiction.)

The most important modern Gothic Romance, I think, is Daphne du Maurier's 1938 bestseller Rebecca. The success of this novel, and the award-winning 1940 Alfred Hitchcock film adaptation, led to many similar books, which you can still find on the paperback racks of your local drug store.


The similarity to the cover of Dracula is interesting.

There are lots of these things floating around, usually with a cover depicting a beautiful young woman and a sinister building in the background. Often there's a single light in the window.


Science fiction writers sometimes produce Gothic Romances as well.

Welcome to Collinsport

I offer you this rather haphazard look at a particular category of popular fiction because the subject came to mind when a new daytime drama (that's a euphemism for soap opera) premiered on American television one week ago. Dark Shadows — even the title suggests Gothic elements — offers the kind of shuddery thrills found in the books I've been discussing. Heck, even the music played during the opening title sequence is spooky!

The first few minutes of the initial episode introduce us to the protagonist and her employers. In the tradition of Jane Eyre, our innocent heroine, Victoria Winters, is an orphan hired to work as a governess.


Victoria Winters, played by newcomer Alexandra Moltke, ponders her past and future.

She travels by train from a foundling home in New York to the fictional village of Collinsport, Maine, where she is to watch over David Collins, the ten-year-old son of Roger Collins.


Young actor David Henesy as the troubled boy David Collins. It must make it easier to have the same first name as your character.

Roger is separated from his wife, David's mother, and is living on the huge estate, including a spooky mansion, known as Collinwood with his fabulously wealthy sister, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. Elizabeth's husband disappeared eighteen years ago, and she hasn't left Collinwood since.


Louis Edmonds as Roger Collins and movie star Joan Bennett as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. You may have seen her share top billing with Edward G. Robinson in The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945), or with Gregory Peck in The Macomber Affair (1947).

Arriving on the same train as Victoria is Burke Devlin. Like many male characters in Gothic Romances, he's darkly attractive, but obviously has some kind of secret in his past. Adding to the intrigue is the fact that Roger is upset when he learns Burke is back in Collinsport.


Mitchell Ryan as Burke Devlin, ruggedly handsome antihero.

Mention should be made of Carolyn Stoddard, Elizabeth's daughter, and her boyfriend, Joe Haskell. Joe wants to marry her, but Carolyn is reluctant. She also seems to be interested in Burke.


Nancy Barrett as Carolyn Stoddard. Women in nightgowns are a staple of Gothic Romances.


Joel Crothers as Joe Haskell, in a happy mood.

Rounding out the list of major characters are Sam Evans, an artist who appears to know something about the trouble between Roger and Burke, and his daughter Maggie, waitress at the local diner.


Kathryn Leigh Scott, in an obvious blonde wig, greets Victoria at the diner, and provides exposition for the audience.


Mark Allen as Sam Evans, who drinks a lot at the Blue Whale, which seems to be the only place to get booze in Collinsport.

After only six episodes, counting today's, we've already got a lot of mysteries.  Who were Victoria's parents?  Why does Elizabeth want her to work at Collinwood?  Where has Burke been for several years?  Why did he return to Collinsport?  Why is Roger unhappy to know he's around?  What does Sam know about the situation?  What happened to Elizabeth's husband? Why hasn't she left the estate since he vanished?  What's in the locked room in the basement?

Besides all this stuff, we've got subtle hints of the supernatural.  Victoria hears unexplained sobbing sounds in the middle of the night.  David claims that ghosts told him to send Victoria away.  Sam tells her that Collinwood is haunted by Josette, a French woman who leapt to her death from a cliff called Widow's Hill nearly two centuries ago.  Whether the ghosts will turn out to be real or not remains to be seen.

It's also unknown whether this offbeat soap opera will stick around for any length of time.  It's a production of ABC (American Broadcasting Company), which is something of an upstart network, much newer than CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) and NBC (National Broadcasting Company.) In my neck of the woods, Dark Shadows shows up at four o'clock in the afternoon, and faces competition from well-established programs on the other networks.


This CBS soap opera has been on the air since 1954.


On NBC, we have The Match Game, which has been running since 1962, and is now being broadcast in color.

If none of this appeals to you, you could always read a book.


Let's see; beautiful woman with a spooky house in the background, one light in the window; must be a Gothic Romance.  And guess what?  My sources in the publishing world tell me that Cassandra Knye is actually the team of New Wave SF writers Thomas M. Disch and John Sladek cashing in on the trend.

If you don't feel like watching TV or reading, tune in to KGJ, our radio station! Nothing but the hits!




No comments Leave A Comment

55 years ago: Science Fact and Fiction